WORLD CUP: A PRE MATCH PERSPECTIVE

Meet Ivan and Tomislav - Sportsbook traders in our Croatia office location, they tell us about their experience working with us during the World Cup!

What’s your Tipico story?

Hi, my name is Ivan. My Tipico journey started in 2020 when I was a student. After a couple of months I was given the opportunity to became a full time member of the Tipico team to work in the Sportsbook department. My main task is to price up matches, most of time on soccer matches, but also some weekends for other sports like Baseball, Basketball, Handball, Ice-Hockey, etc.

My name is Tomislav and my Tipico journey began in July of 2020. Being 20 years old at the time and this being my first job, it was challenging for me but luckily my team members were more than helpful in every aspect. My area of work is prematch event pricing, creating events for our colleagues who work in the live trading department and solving any problems that might occur before the matches start. Most of the time I work on football but sometimes, mostly on weekend I work on other sports too. World Cup 2022 will be my first World Cup working as part of Tipico so it is all new for me.

WHAT DOES YOUR DAILY PITCH LOOK LIKE?

A typical day at work is always dynamic. We have our offer that is visible in our shops and web/mobile. My colleagues and I create the daily offer for our customers. Besides that, we also have other daily tasks like creating events for our team members in the Live trading department and work on any given problems related to the events until they start. That means that we have to check if the time and date of a kick off are correct, if the participants are ok, and also we have to check that our events that we do offer are listed on our allowed leagues list. In general, we have to monitor our offer and be prepared to jump at solving any problems that might occur.

Tell us about working with us during the World Cup...

Ivan:

Well for the World Cup we have the same preparation as for any other major competition. This World Cup is specific, because of the place and time that it is held. When groups have been drawn and the schedule has been set we increase our work dedicated to the World Cup so we can be as prepared as possible such as creating templates and risk settings for our groups. Besides that, we also monitor what our competition is doing within the market and we try to have the best possible offer that we can give them. We try to create as many special bets so that our customers would have more markets to play. Also, we keep track of players, because this World Cup will be held in the middle of the club season, any major player injury can change our offer so we have to pay close attention. Since the World Cup is only one month away we can't wait for it to start and we hope for the best possible result for the Croatian national team.

Tomislav:

The preparation for World Cup is very specific because of the magnitude of the event. When the groups were drawn and the schedule was out that's the time we started working intensely on our offer, we set templates and risk limits on groups and offered games. So that first part of preparation is pretty much the same as for all other events. The difference is that we will offer as many special bets as we can for example - the WC Winner, group winners, top scorer and so on. A big part of the preparation is setting up pricing strategy for games, outrights and special bets to be out with the odds as early as possible but also to be as competitive as possible.

What do you enjoy most and what are the challenges during this period?

Ivan:

The thing that I enjoy most is to work on our daily offer with my team members. We try to be as productive as we can, overcoming any obstacle that might occur in our daily assignments so our customers will always have the best offer.  But that's also the most challenging part of our everyday work!

Tomislav:

One of the most important things regarding the WC is keeping track of information about all national teams who are participating, especially for this one since this is the first time ever that it will take place in the middle of the club football season. It seems like every other day some player gets injured or something happens that can have great impact on our odds and because of that our teams are checking information and our odds on daily basis. It is very challenging to set this all up but here we are - everything is ready, we are all excited and expect this to be a great World cup both from a business standpoint and also for the Croatian National team.